


hold me tight & don't let go

by kaletra7



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Consent is Sexy, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Naked Cuddling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-14
Updated: 2018-04-14
Packaged: 2019-04-22 17:44:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14313873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaletra7/pseuds/kaletra7
Summary: He sighs, long and deep, and murmurs something under his breath, so quietly that she doesn’t even catch the word. The untamedreverencein his tone suggests it should have been her name, but it’s a syllable short and just a little too harsh a sound.The second word is clearer, though. She hears this one as soon as it pushes past his lips.“Stop.”She’s off him in an instant.Stopis not a command that can ever be misunderstood, after all. Kashaw’s jaw is tight when she blinks through the darkness to look at him properly, and Zahra can’t help but feel she’s had an awful lapse of judgement.-Kashaw addresses none of his issues properly, Vesh sucks, and Zahra gives a verbal-smackdown to a minor deity.





	hold me tight & don't let go

Her heart thuds noisily, fluttering with the promise of the evening’s excitement, as Zahra raps her fist decidedly against Kashaw’s door. She’s been debating coming to him like this for weeks, but the time had never felt quite right. It still doesn’t, if she’s honest, but the threat of war is looming like a shadow over Whitestone and she isn’t sure she’s ever going to get a chance if she doesn’t take this one. 

It isn’t a fear of rejection that clasps her tightly by the throat. It is another fear entirely; that of tearing an irreparable hole in the friendship that she has worked so hard to build. Zahra would be the first to admit that Kashaw is not a pleasant man to be around. He’s abrasive, rude, coarse and thinks very little of the feelings of others. But she also recognises the person beneath; the frightened boy with the weight of a city’s army on his shoulders. Ninety-percent of the soldiers he trains are lost causes. She’s a realist. But Kashaw pushes them nonetheless and he keeps his apprehensions to Zahra’s ears alone. 

She’s his closest confidante. His _only_ confidante.

Her knock echoes uselessly against the wooden door, but that isn’t unexpected. Once Kashaw has excused himself from his duties, it takes a nigh-miracle to persuade him to communicate with _anyone_. Everyone is stretched thin and alone time is a precious commodity, but Kashaw values his own more than most.

“It’s me, dear,” she announces in an almost theatrical whisper, taking a cursory glance down each end of the dimly-lit corridor to ensure that she is still alone. Zahra would take little shame in being caught sneaking into Kashaw’s room in the middle of the night, but she doubts that her private business would remain private for very long were some prying eyes to spot her. Rumours are golden entertainment in a city this highly-strung. The implication that the infernal-blooded warlock might be spending her nights in the bed of the golden cleric with striking eyes and a permanent scowl would be sure to set tongues wagging throughout Whitestone. 

A full minute passes before she hears anything, but the door eventually swings open to reveal Kashaw, hair bedraggled and eyes ever-so-slightly bleary. “Hey,” he says after a pause, voice heavy and rough with interrupted sleep, clearly waiting to decide whether she is here for a reason worth disturbing his night’s rest. Zahra smiles a toothy smile, leaning loosely against the doorframe.

“Hello.”

His eyes narrow just a modicum as he works to decipher her intentions, though Zahra had figured that the seduction would be at least _somewhat_ obvious. She so rarely steps out of her own room in anything other than her leathers, so the thin shift and leggings are a far cry from her norm. Truth be told, the practically _transparent_ garment isn’t even her own, but something she found herself in possession of after a day or two of poking through long-unoccupied bedrooms in quieter wings of the castle. A rather delicious shade of cream inlaid with gold thread had caught her eye, and Zahra found herself falling utterly in love with it. 

Kashaw, to his credit, seems to keep his attention solely on her face, which is quite a feat considering her own gaze had been rather _drawn_ to certain areas when she looked herself over in the mirror earlier. 

“Look, Z,” he eventually starts, rubbing his eyes rather roughly with one thumb, “It’s the middle of the night, so if you’re just gonna stand there and grin at me, I’m going back to bed.”

The poor dear is _exceedingly_ oblivious.

His interest is clearly _there_. She would have to be blind to have missed the way he looks at her when he thinks she isn’t paying attention. Catching Kashaw’s face flush as he frantically looks in every direction but hers has almost become a hobby. Zahra wouldn’t be here at all if she didn’t sense an attraction brewing between them. And yet he stands here, valiantly sustaining eye contact instead of looking down at what she is so shamelessly presenting to him. Honestly, his self-control is admirable. 

“Come here, darling.” With one hand, she cups the back of his neck and tugs him towards her, leaning up just a little to bridge the gap and catch his lips with her own. His mouth is cool against hers, the contrast obvious between the searing heat that builds naturally under her own infernal skin and the base warmth beneath his. Kashaw, though both taller and broader than herself, goes malleable in her arms, and it’s easy to press him backwards against the wall just inside his room. His head hits the stone with an audible noise and Kashaw groans into the kiss, hands that were previously stiff at his side shifting upwards to mould gently against her hips. 

A swift kick of the door is enough to close it, and the loss of the corridor’s torchlight plunges Kashaw’s room into darkness. Zahra slides her kisses from his lips, across his jaw and down to his neck, nibbling gently before soothing his flesh with gentle flickers of her tongue. He sighs, long and deep, and murmurs something under his breath, so quietly that she doesn’t even catch the word. The untamed _reverence_ in his tone suggests it should have been her name, but it’s a syllable short and just a little too harsh a sound.

The second word is clearer, though. She hears this one as soon as it pushes past his lips.

“Stop.”

She’s off him in an instant. _Stop_ is not a command that can ever be misunderstood, after all. Kashaw’s jaw is tight when she blinks through the darkness to look at him properly, and Zahra can’t help but feel she’s had an awful lapse of judgement. 

The silence in the room is heavy, almost oppressively so. Someone’s heart is beating a furious rhythm, but whether it’s his or her own, Zahra isn’t in a place to tell. His eyes are burning, something vaguely akin to anger blazing in the asymmetric pupils.

“I’m sorry, darling,” she finally says, voice quieter than she’s been in a long time. “I shouldn’t have assumed-”

“No, no,” Kashaw cuts her off with a wave of his hand. The rest of the apology dies on Zahra’s tongue as she is struck with the truth of what she sees written on his face. It is not anger, as she had assumed, but _fear_. A pure, unbridled look of terror that he wears as he stares blankly beyond her. It’s such an utterly foreign expression to see on Kashaw that Zahra turns on a heel to look into the corner of the room, convinced that she’s going to come face-to-face with some nightmarish vision. It’s empty. His gaze is locked onto something she can’t see. Something in his head, a dream or a memory or some other dark shadow he hasn’t ever shared with her. 

“Kash,” she whispers as she faces him once again. Zahra reaches out, feather-light, and takes the hand that stretches out towards her, stepping to his side in what she hopes comes across as a show of solidarity. “What is it? What do you see?” 

He visibly swallows, throat bobbing once, twice, before he finally forms the words. “I- nothing. There’s nothing there, I’m just-” Kashaw’s voice trails off as he shakes his head. “I’m sorry.”

“For what, darling?” 

Kashaw’s eyes flicker to her. The moment holds for a sustained beat, before he seems to recognise the safety and comfort that her presence would usually bring. He hauls in a deep breath then, blinking as though the world has only just come into focus. There’s confusion written in his expression, though she is thankful that the fear seems to have dissipated. 

“I can’t.”

The tone of his voice is almost pained.

“You can’t?”

His characteristically quick tongue is eager to clarify. “No. I mean. I _can_. I definitely _can_. I just-”

“Don’t want to?”

A long silence drags over the room. Kashaw squints into the darkness and it vaguely occurs to her that he probably can’t see a thing. Her own vision is perfectly vivid like this, but she throws a small bead of arcane light towards a torch sconce for the sake of his comfort. Zahra knows he doesn’t like asking for things at the best of times, so the way his eyes shyly flicker to hers as they adjust to the dim flame is all the gratitude she needs. 

“It’s complicated, Z,” he finally says. She waits for a further explanation. He doesn’t give one.

Squeezing the hand that she still grasps within her own, Zahra gives him the gentlest smile she can muster. “Talk to me, darling. I’m a good listener.”

The breath practically shudders into Kashaw’s lungs as he inhales. His ragged sigh is a decisive noise; a man resigned to an unpleasant fate. She’s about to relent, to tell him he doesn’t need to explain himself. She’ll go back to her room, leave him to his, and they’ll never discuss this night again. 

Kashaw turns to face her, withdrawing his hand but pulling away no more than a few inches. His expression is unreadable; a far more common state than the blatant terror Zahra saw searing through his eyes moments before. “It’s a long story, but I’m guessing you don’t have anywhere else to be.” She huffs out a laugh and shakes her head. _No. Nowhere but here._

He drops heavily onto the bed. Zahra contemplates sitting beside him but his gaze catches hers sharply and she freezes in place. He wants distance for whatever he’s about to share. She can give him that.

And he tells her everything.

Zahra listens to the tale of a boy, born to parents he never knew and whisked away to what he grew up calling a higher purpose. A boy who was raised like a lamb for slaughter, fattened on words of holy justice and promises of saving countless lives as long as he put the knife to his own throat. A boy just turned fifteen, aware of what the ritual entailed but not fully understanding until there were lips at his ear, a blade at his arm, and uninvited, unwanted hands everywhere. A boy who cried out for it to stop and was ignored. A boy who awoke, blood pouring from one hundred neat cuts, numb and empty and entirely alone. 

The same boy sits before her now. He’s older, stronger and wiser, but Kashaw’s eyes still speak of a hollow terror that has never left. 

At the end of his story, Kashaw falls silent. Zahra stoops a little in an attempt to catch his eye, but he ducks away from her gaze. “Darling,” she begins, voice so low it is almost a purr, “You’re safe here.”

“No, I’m not.” Apparently resigned to his hopelessness, Kashaw tugs his sleeve down to cover the harsh, pink lines that dot his right arm. The furs on the bed rustle softly as he curls into them, winding himself into a tight ball in the centre of the bed. It feels like a dismissal. 

“I’m sorry,” she says eventually, after searching for a reason to stay and coming up with nothing. “I shouldn’t have assumed you wanted… I shouldn’t have assumed you wanted anything at all.” 

Silence drops like a leaden weight over the room once again. Zahra turns to leave, but she barely gets more than a step towards the door before his near-inaudible voice interrupts her exit. “You’re right, though.”

“About what?”

“Me. I do want something.”

If it were anyone else, under any other circumstance, Zahra would turn to teasing. She’d grin, perhaps even bite her lip, and ask him to be more _specific_. But all she musters now is a gentle smile as she pads over to the bed and sits lightly by his feet. “But you’re afraid of what she might do if she found out. Correct?”

His hair shifts. It could be a yes. It could be a no.

“Let me tell you something, darling. If she wants to come near you ever again, she’s going to have to go through me.”

Kashaw exhales what might be a laugh, though whether she’s genuinely cheered him up or he’s just amused by her overconfidence, she isn’t sure. She doesn’t care. She’s elicited a laugh from him, and that’s what matters. 

“Stay,” he mumbles into the blankets.

“Okay.”

Zahra spends three long seconds attempting to figure out exactly how much sleep she’ll get if she curls up at the end of the bed, before Kashaw sighs like he’s annoyed by her loud, loud thoughts. “Just _get in_ , Z.” 

The first thing she notices as she presses up against his back is just how broad his shoulders are. It’s obvious when he’s in full plate, sure, but she had generally assumed that his armour added bulk that wasn’t otherwise there. But he’s so wide in the shoulders that she has to settle for wrapping her arms around his lean waist instead. Between that and the leg that she throws over his thighs, she has him in a tight embrace that no-one, evil goddess or not, is going to break. 

“Could you hold me a little tighter?” he quips dryly when she finally settles. “I can still breathe.” 

“Hush now.” Zahra buries her face into his hair, inhaling a not-unpleasant combination of leather and smoke. “It’s time to sleep.”

“You could take your shirt off, if you like.” She raises an eyebrow, and though Kashaw has no hope of seeing it, he reacts like he watched it happen. “For comfort, of course. It looks like it must be scratchy. Harsh material. Not good for sleeping. Also, you might get hot in the night. Hotter, I mean. You’re already hot. I just don’t want you, like, overheating or something like that.” 

“How very considerate of you,” she answers dryly, but hauls the lacy blouse over her head anyway, taking great care not to tear the thing as she pulls it over her horns. It ends up in a rather pitiful heap in the corner of the room, because luxurious as it is, she’d much rather stay wrapped in this tight embrace than spend a good minute folding the damn chemise. “Take yours off, then,” Zahra urges softly, considering it entirely unfair that she should be the only one bare from the waist-up. Kashaw hesitates for a moment and Zahra wonders if she’s crossed another line, but he pulls the cotton shirt off in one swift, decisive movement and throws it into the corner to join her own. “Good boy,” she says without thinking, and Kashaw goes taut in her arms with a tiny, muffled groan that he fails to bite back in time. 

_That_ is something to explore another night.

For now, she settles back into their embrace, which the shirt-removal has taken from something _mostly_ platonic to something decidedly _not_. It’s almost post-coital in its intensity, considering how fast her heart has suddenly decided to beat and how utterly boneless and spent Kashaw seems in her arms. The soft snore that breaks through the room shatters the intensity nicely. Zahra grins, affection swelling in her belly, and presses a soft kiss to the back of his neck. Telling his story took a lot out of him, that much was obvious, but falling asleep only _moments_ into a half-nude cuddle seems like it would have been _rude_ under other circumstances. She’s content to let him slumber, though. Zahra rather has her suspicions that he doesn’t do a whole lot of it at the best of times. 

*

Zahra dreams of a boy. He’s scared, alone, and blinks up at her with one eye of blue and one of gold. Blood still coats his right arm, which looks to have been torn to shreds by the knife that he clasps tightly in his left. And _she_ is there. Darkness. Foreboding. A shape that Zahra can barely fathom but nonetheless distinctly feminine in its appearance. Looming over the poor boy. Too close. 

_Vesh_.

“You will not touch him again,” she says to the figure. A blink and Zahra is in front of her, standing as a bulwark between the wolf and the lamb. Vesh has no discernible eyes that Zahra can place, but she feels the hatred radiate from the nothingness on the goddess’s face all the same. “Did you hear me? You will not touch him.” The darkness looms heavier, expanding, flooding the empty space like water flowing to fill a bowl. “Yes, yes, we can all look intimidating when we want,” Zahra continues, mildly surprised by her own boldness in the face of a deity. Whether this manifestation is real or not, she thinks with sudden clarity, there is no doubt in her mind that Vesh is watching. Waiting. Taking a measure of her competition.

Best not to disappoint, then. 

The crackling energy in her hands sears white-hot as she plunges it into the heart of the darkness. Vesh shrieks, writhes, claws uselessly at Zahra’s arms. “I’m not scared of you,” she explains to the outraged deity, lips curling into an arrogant smile. “It’s fucking difficult when they’re not scared of you, isn’t it?” Vesh screams something unintelligible and dissipates, though the echo of her howling hangs in the air. _Is that all?_ Zahra is almost offended that it was so easy. 

The boy is a man when she turns back to face him. The eyes are the same. The bleeding has stopped. He looks at her like she’s something to be revered, and Zahra takes his face gently in her hands and places the softest, sweetest of kisses to his parted lips. 

“She is weak. She is broken. You and I are not. We’re strong, Kashaw. And we’re going to beat her. You’re not a little boy anymore and you don’t have to be afraid of her. As for me, well. I’m going to tear that dreadful bitch that calls herself your wife into pieces and I am going to scatter her remains to the wind.”

*

In the deep darkness of his room, warm and safe in the arms of a woman who holds him tighter than even a goddess could manage, Kashaw smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> I love them so much.
> 
> More of this might be on the cards eventually.
> 
> Come hang out with [me](http://kaletra7.tumblr.com).
> 
> [ko-fi.](http://ko-fi.com/kaletra)


End file.
